How to Make a White Chocolate Drink: Easy Hot White Chocolate Recipe

Short answer: to make a white chocolate drink, heat milk and cream in a saucepan until steaming, stir in finely chopped white chocolate until it melts, add vanilla and serve at once. Dairy Farmers of Canada's White Chocolate Steamer uses 500 mL of milk, 500 mL of 10% cream, 120 g of white chocolate and 5 mL of vanilla for 6 servings, ready in 12 to 15 minutes. The chocolate you choose decides the flavour, so use real white chocolate made with cocoa butter.

Quick answer: what you need

Your need	Product	Price
Real white chocolate, made with cocoa butter	White chocolate couverture	See current availability
Whisk the chocolate smoothly into the hot milk	Martellato stainless-steel whisk, 8 wires, 40 cm	$13.95 CAD
Measure the milk and serving temperature every time	Martellato 50T003 digital thermometer with immersion probe	$53.95 CAD
Serve a dark version next to the white one	Bassan Sur del Lago 71% dark couverture, 5 kg bag	$273.00 CAD

White chocolate drink recipe (White Chocolate Steamer)

This is the White Chocolate Steamer published by Dairy Farmers of Canada: a simple method that melts the chocolate straight into hot milk and cream. It makes 6 servings, with 10 minutes of preparation and 2 to 5 minutes of cooking.

Ingredient	Metric	Imperial
10% cream	500 mL	2 cups
Milk	500 mL	2 cups
White chocolate, finely chopped	120 g	4 oz
Vanilla extract	5 mL	1 tsp

1. Heat the liquid. Heat the cream and milk in a saucepan over medium-high heat until steaming.
2. Melt in the chocolate. Stir in the white chocolate until all the pieces have melted.
3. Flavour. Stir in the vanilla.
4. Serve. Pour into mugs and serve immediately.

Per serving, that works out to about 20 g of white chocolate in about 167 mL of milk and cream. Weigh the chocolate rather than counting pieces: the same weight every time gives the same cup every time.

Why the chocolate melts smoothly in this method

White chocolate melted into a large amount of hot liquid does not seize, because there is far more liquid than the minimum it needs. The Exploratorium's Science of Cooking advice is to use at least 1 tablespoon (15 mL) of water per ounce of chocolate, white chocolate included, when you melt chocolate with liquid. In this recipe there is 1 L of milk and cream for 4 oz of chocolate, about 16 times that minimum of 60 mL.

The risk is the opposite situation: a little liquid on a lot of chocolate. Melting chocolate cannot tolerate small drops of water, and even the steam from a double boiler, or condensation dripping from a lid, can make it seize. So keep the chopped chocolate dry until it goes into the pan. If it does seize, the Exploratorium suggests whisking in a tablespoon of warm water, then more a teaspoon at a time until smooth.

Chop the chocolate finely, or use drops or callets, so it melts quickly and evenly in the hot milk. For more on melting, see our chocolate melting tips.

Which white chocolate to use

Use real white chocolate: the drink tastes of what you melt into it. In Canada, white chocolate has its own compositional standard: at least 20% cocoa butter, at least 14% total milk solids and at least 3.5% milk fat. Its flavour comes from cocoa butter, milk and sugar.

Compound white coatings are a different product: they replace the cocoa butter with a hard fat, usually hydrogenated palm kernel oil. Read the ingredient list and look for cocoa butter.

• Drops, callets or wafers come ready to melt, with no chopping.
• A couverture's datasheet tells you its cocoa butter content and recommended uses, which helps you compare one white chocolate with another.

For the full picture, read what is white chocolate.

View white chocolate couverture →

Flavours, toppings and variations

Keep the base simple and add one idea at a time. These additions come from Dairy Farmers of Canada's other hot chocolate recipes; they were written for dark or cocoa drinks, so taste as you go when you use them with white chocolate:

• Cinnamon: heat the milk with cinnamon sticks, then remove them before serving (Cinnamint Hot Chocolate).
• Mint: a small amount of peppermint extract, ¼ tsp (1 mL) for 1 L of milk in the Cinnamint recipe.
• Whipped cream: a dollop of whipped 35% cream swirled into each mug (The Very Best Hot Chocolate).
• Marshmallows: mini marshmallows on top (Spiced Hot Chocolate).
• Coffee: ½ cup (125 mL) of strong hot coffee added to a mug, the "adventurous" option in the same recipes; with white chocolate, that makes a white mocha-style drink.

Want it dark instead? Our guide to the best dark chocolate drinks covers couverture hot chocolate, cocoa hot chocolate, mocha and cacao-nib infusions.

Make-ahead: hot chocolate on a stick

For gifts, markets or a café counter, Dairy Farmers of Canada sets the chocolate on a stick in advance and lets the customer melt it into hot milk. Their method:

1. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler until smooth.
2. Pour it into small paper cups, turning them to coat the sides, and refrigerate for 15 minutes; peel off the cups.
3. Fill the shells with toppings such as mini marshmallows, pour in the rest of the chocolate, insert a wooden stick and chill until fully hard.
4. To serve, heat a cup of milk, put a stick in it and stir until it melts.

They store for two weeks in the refrigerator in an airtight container, or one month in the freezer. Dairy Farmers of Canada makes them with milk chocolate chips; if you use white chocolate, make a test batch first.

For cafés and pastry kitchens: consistency and cost per cup

A drink on a menu has to taste the same on every shift. Three habits do most of the work:

• One white chocolate for the drink. A different chocolate gives a different drink; do not swap between batches.
• Weigh and measure. Write the recipe in grams and millilitres, and record the temperature you serve at with a probe thermometer, so any shift can reproduce it.
• Cost it. Divide the price of your chocolate by the grams in each cup (about 20 g in the recipe above) to get the chocolate cost per serving, then add milk, cream and toppings.

How AI can help your production

Give an AI assistant the recipe above, your cup size and your ingredient prices, and ask it for the cost per cup and the margin at your menu price. Ask it to scale the recipe from 6 servings to a batch for your service, keeping the same ratio of chocolate to milk and cream, and to turn it into a one-page procedure for the bar team with the serving temperature you have chosen.

AI organises the information; tasting and the final decision stay with your chef.

White chocolate drinks with Zucchero Canada

For a white chocolate drink, each product has its own job:

• The chocolate: our white chocolate couverture collection; check it for current availability.
• The tools: the Martellato 8-wire whisk ($13.95 CAD) and the Martellato 50T003 probe thermometer ($53.95 CAD), which reads from −32°F to 482°F.
• Making your own white chocolate: natural cocoa butter from Peruvian fine cacao, 8 kg box ($550.00 CAD).
• A dark drink next to the white one: Bassan Sur del Lago 71%, a single-origin couverture made in Canada from Venezuelan cacao.

Food products ship within Canada only, and chocolate is excluded from our free-shipping offer. Orders over CAD 500 get 5% off automatically at checkout. Buying for a café, hotel or chain? Contact us or call 587-774-8873 (toll free 877-741-8251).

White chocolate couverture | Pastry tools | What is white chocolate? | Best dark chocolate drinks | How to temper white chocolate

This article is for information only. Every business is different: draw your own conclusions based on your own expectations, budget and goals, and talk to qualified experts before you decide or invest.

Sources: Dairy Farmers of Canada, Canadian Goodness recipes "White Chocolate Steamer", "Hot Chocolate on a Stick", "Cinnamint Hot Chocolate", "Spiced Hot Chocolate" and "The Very Best Hot Chocolate"; Exploratorium, Science of Cooking, "Ask the Inquisitive Cooks" (melting chocolate with liquid, seizing); Canadian Food Compositional Standards, Volume 4 – Cocoa and Chocolate Products, section 4.1.9 (CFIA); BC Cook Articulation Committee, Understanding Ingredients for the Canadian Baker (BCcampus), "Compound chocolate"; Zucchero Canada product data for the Martellato whisk and 50T003 thermometer, natural cocoa butter and Bassan Sur del Lago 71%.